Jackie's Wild Seattle (6 page)

I finally got to sleep, only to end up fighting a nightmare myself, an old one that was back like a disease. I was in an airplane that had been hijacked by terrorists who were flying us right at a skyscraper. A moment before the impact I saw people jump up from their desks. They were looking at us and we were looking at them. Somehow Cody and I survived the collision and found ourselves inside the building. In the dark and the smoke and amid the screams, we started racing down the stairs. After what seemed like forever—everybody kept falling on one another—we had only reached the forty-sixth floor, and time was running out. The whole building was about to come down.

Finally I got so scared, I blinked myself awake. And there was Cody, standing by my bed. “Something's different,” he said. “It's all cloudy. It's starting to rain.”

By now I was awake enough to see he was clutching his blankie. There was a hurt look on his face. “What is it?” I said.

“Uncle Neal got hurt.”

I sat up. “How, Cody? What happened? How bad is he hurt?”

“It was in a dream, Shan.”

“Oh, thank goodness. Don't scare me like that! Come, sit on the bed and tell me about it.”

He sat on the bedside, sort of hiding his blankie with his leg. It used to picture Mickey Mouse from
The Sorcerer's Apprentice,
with the wand and the wizard's hat, but these days you had to fill in quite a bit with your imagination. Cody had been on the verge of retiring his blankie when September 11 happened. “Go ahead, Cody,” I told him. “It's good to talk about your bad dreams.”

Even though I haven't been talking about my own, I thought.

“Okay, Uncle Neal was on a steep roof trying to kill a cat with a hockey stick.”

“Cody, Uncle Neal does not kill cats.”

“I know, but he doesn't like how they kill so many birds, and Tyler killed a dog with a stick. It all got mixed together.”

“I can see that, but how did you know what Tyler did?”

“Robbie told me. The bad part of my dream was, Uncle Neal slipped when he was trying to kill the cat and fell off the roof. He got hurt really bad. He had to go to the hospital.”

I gave him a hug. “This is not a big deal, Cody. Strange things happen in dreams. I ought to know, I have my share of weird ones.”

“Bad ones, scary ones?”

“Last night I had one about the World Trade Center—the airplanes and the towers. I've had it before.”

Cody crumpled. “Don't talk about that, Shannie!”

“Okay,” I said. “I just mentioned it to show you it's still bothering me, too. As for your dream, it just shows how much you care about Uncle Neal. Of course you don't want him to get hurt.”

“Is it okay if I tell him not to go up on any roofs?”

“Maybe sometimes he needs to.”

“What if I ask him not to just for today?”

“He's not going to. It's raining.”

The rain kept up through the morning. It was still raining when we got on the road. “This is more like it!” Uncle Neal exclaimed as we took off. “I've got some genuine Seattle weather to show you. The beat of the wipers is music to my ears. We get nine months of this!”

“I'm sure glad we came in the summer,” I said.

“The dry season is for wimps!” the Midnight Rambler declared as he swerved off the road and into a drive-through espresso. Neal waited with the window open. His sleeve was getting wet but that didn't seem to bother him.

Neal took the hot paper cup and cradled it in his hands. “Before people ever drank these, they used them for hand warmers.”

“He's goofy today,” Cody said from the back.

“No, I'm Pluto. I feel good, you guys.” Neal took a long sip from his coffee, then set it in the cup holder. “Ahhh…I'm on top of the world, I'm the king of the world! Liberty snatched a herring right out of my hand this morning. With vigor. Sun, sun, go away, there's nothing like a rainy day.”

“Does that mean she stood up?” I asked hopefully.

“No, but…”

I quickly changed the subject. “Uncle Neal, remember the first time you visited back East, before Cody was born?”

“I remember it well. You were five.”

“That's right, and I remember sitting on the park bench at the end of the block with you. Dad was pointing out the famous skyscrapers: the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the…”

I hesitated, on account of Cody, then finished my sentence anyway: “…the World Trade Center towers.”

From the backseat, a very loud silence.

“It's okay to talk about them,” I said over my shoulder. “It would be sad if we didn't remember them. Cody, you'll like this. Uncle Neal started telling us how the skyscrapers in Seattle are covered with moss, from all the rain. I remember that, trying to picture it.”

“Ha! That's a good one!”

Neal found Cody in the rearview mirror. “Come back in October, Cody. That's when the rains kick in and the moss starts to grow. Why do you think people here call it the Emerald City?”

I said, “Mom told me the real reason. She said people from Seattle hype the bad weather so it won't get too crowded.”

Uncle Neal laughed. “So you're on to us. Is that so bad?”

“Bumper sticker!” the kid in the backseat yelled. “Uncle Neal, get closer.”

“Cody, we're going seventy,” I said. “You want to tailgate, in the rain?”

Neal did edge a little closer.

“What does it say, Shannie, what does it say? Something about a toilet!”

“Cody…”

“I got it!
POLICE STATION TOILET STOLEN—COPS HAVE NOTHING TO GO ON.
That's the best of all time!”

“Write it down so you won't forget it, Cody.”

“I'm writing it down now!”

Uncle Neal reached for his coffee. “The rest of the summer will be downhill from here.”

“I've got one,” I nearly shouted. “It applies to you, Cody.
ALWAYS REMEMBER YOU'RE UNIQUE—JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE.
”

Neal drove us to a golf course overlooking Lake Washington. Our mission was to free a hawk that was tangled in a net on the driving range. It was drizzling when we got there, but people were out on the course playing golf. “A day without sunshine is like a day in Seattle,” Uncle Neal said as we parked at the pro shop.

From the parking lot we could see the bird in the net. Fortunately it wasn't very high off the ground. It had to be a large bird if we could make it out from so far away. We drove out to the hawk in style, a carrier and a folding chair fastened on the back of our golf cart with bungee cords. Sage had to stay in the ambulance.

The hawk was hanging upside down. “Must've bounced when it hit the net,” Neal said. “Bounced and got its talons entangled. It doesn't look hurt, really. What a beauty, a full-grown red-tailed hawk. We should have it on its way shortly.” Neal pulled the heavy welding gloves over his light buckskin gloves.

The sun was coming out, and I was distracted by a glorious rainbow over Lake Washington. I didn't really see what happened.

Uncle Neal had climbed onto the chair and was starting to go to work. It was going to be a slow process with his clumsy gloves. I heard him say, “Oh,” just “Oh,” like he was mildly surprised about something. I looked up and saw spatters on his sunglasses. It took me a second to realize it was blood, fresh blood. I had no idea what was going on. I guess
I thought it was from the hawk.

Supporting his left hand with his right, Neal got down off the chair, staring at his left glove. The heel of the glove's thumb had a clean slice through it, as if it was defective. Uncle Neal looked extremely confused, and then he said, “Must've got me.”

Neal held up his left hand, and we both saw something new. Blood was streaming down his forearm. I stared but still couldn't make sense of it.

“It can't be that bad,” Neal said. “I didn't feel a thing. Slip the welding glove off for me, will you, Shannon? Slow and easy.”

I worked it off as gently as possible, only to discover that the buckskin glove underneath was completely soaked with blood. Then I saw. Neal was cut clean through the inside glove too. His thumb was laid back, laid completely open. Just like raw meat. Tendons cut, his whole thumb askew like it could fall off. I was going dizzy and had to fight turning away.

Uncle Neal's eyes went wide. “I didn't feel a thing. I didn't even know it got me.”

I was so stunned, all I could say was the obvious: “This is bad, Uncle Neal.”

He was still looking at his hand like it was someone else's. He said calmly, “I can't believe I lost my focus like that.”

“You have a first-aid kit in the ambulance, right? Where is it?”

“The medical kit is under the back seat. We'll get some bandages.”

“Let's get going, then,” I said urgently. “Cody!” I yelled. He was pretty far off, kicking golf balls, soccer-style, into the net.

The hawk beat its wings, then was still again. Neal looked
up at it. The hawk blinked at him fiercely. Upside down in the net like that, who would have thought it could have been a threat?

“Not without the bird,” Uncle Neal said. “If we leave the hawk, it'll die.”

He shucked the welding glove off his right hand and fished a pocketknife out of his jeans. “Open it up for me, Shannon.”

“Uncle Neal, forget the bird.” Tears burned at my eyes.

He shook his head. “I can't just leave him. Not to mention Jackie is crazy about redtails. She'd skin me alive.”

I opened the blade and handed it to him. Neal stepped onto the folding chair and started hacking at the net around the bird. “At least it didn't get my right hand.”

Meanwhile Neal's left hand was hanging at his side, streaming blood.

By this time Cody was standing there, wondering what was going on. From my voice he knew that something was very wrong. He hadn't noticed Uncle Neal's left hand yet, didn't have a clue.

“You can't do that one-handed,” I said. “Let me do it.”

Uncle Neal got down off the chair, handed me the knife, cradled his left hand with his right. Then Cody saw. He went pale and looked away.

“Just don't come near those talons,” Uncle Neal warned me.

“Don't worry, I won't.” The knife was sharp, thank goodness. I cut a wide circle around the bird.

“His left foot isn't tangled at all,” Neal said with sudden understanding. “I just assumed it was. He's holding himself with that left foot, and the back talon is free. Look, Cody, that back talon is what got me.”

I don't know if Cody looked. I sure didn't. I was keeping
my eyes on what I was doing and working as fast as possible without cutting my fingers off.

“Will they get mad about their net?” Cody wondered.

Through gritted teeth, Neal said, “They can patch it back together.”

With a quick glance at his face I saw the pain had kicked in, extreme pain. “We have to save this bird,” Neal said, “or this is all for nothing.”

The more net I cut loose, the more the bird got tangled. I had to keep one eye on its talons so I didn't get anywhere close to them. “Get the carrier ready, Cody.”

Eyes big as saucers, Cody jumped into action.

“There,” I said, holding the tangle of net with the hawk inside as I cut the last strand. I stepped down with the bird and eased it through the carrier door. “Let's get you to the hospital,” I said to Neal.

“University Medical Center,” he said. “It's not far away. Great job with the bird, Shannon.”

We boarded the cart and drove straight to the door of the van. Cody threw the door open and whipped out the medical kit. I managed to remove the buckskin glove from Uncle Neal's injured left hand without pulling off his thumb, which was a minor miracle.

His hand was a gruesome sight. I wrapped it around and around with gauze bandaging, firm enough to slow the bleeding. I stowed the carrier in the back and then we were out of there.

“Drive carefully,” I told Uncle Neal. “I'm sure you're in shock. Cody, is your seatbelt fastened?”

“Got it.”

I said to Neal, “You've been feeling it awhile now.”

“Oh yeah, I can feel it.”

At the emergency room, they told Uncle Neal he was in
luck. The best surgeon in Seattle for what he needed was here in the hospital and not operating at the moment. They'd send for her right away.

“I'll call Jackie,” I told Uncle Neal. “She'll take care of everything.”

“That she will. You guys take care of Sage, Jackie will take care of the hawk.”

Uncle Neal was led away to an examining room. I called the center and got Rosie. Jackie was away releasing animals, but Rosie was going to come as soon as she could. She would bring another driver for the van. As I hung up I realized that Neal hadn't given me the keys.

I got Cody settled in the waiting area off of the emergency room. All of a sudden he got this intense look as he reached for a magazine. On the cover was an erupting volcano.

I told the emergency room receptionist my problem. She said she'd get the van keys for me. I asked if I could go myself and tell Neal what they said at the wildlife center. “First room on the right,” she said. “He's still waiting for the doctor.”

I hesitated as I approached. There were voices from inside the room, Neal's and a woman's. The doctor was already there. I sat down on the chair outside and waited.

“No medications since the first of June? Where do you stand with your treatments?”

“I'm in a wait-and-see. I have an appointment for the twenty-fifth of August—that'll be thirteen months after I got the diagnosis.”

“How did you handle the chemotherapy?”

“I was up and down with it. I just hope it's all behind me.”

Chemotherapy.
The word hit me so hard I couldn't breathe.